New AntiVirus Freeware

[napaneeont]

{Anti-virus scanner} Gladiator AntiVirus GAV is a professional virus and Trojan scanner. GAV is designed to detect and identify known viruses, worms, Trojans, backdoors, and macro viruses within boot sectors, main boot records, partition tables, and memory. You can use GAV for scanning all your floppy disks, hard disks, CD- ROMs and network drives. It also detects and unpacks runtime- packed trojans/worms/backdoors - an important feature. Most of the commercial scanners don't have this feature, so GAV can work as a second on-demand scanner to protect the PC from packed/patched malware that other scanners don't find.

Gladiator AntiVirus v1.5.0 [3.3M] FREE

http://www.gladiator-antivirus.com/

 

[buckaroo]

I noted this from their web site:

Note: GAV IS STILL IN ALPHA PHASE OF DEVELOPMENT!

Have you tried this AV? I've been curious about it, but ever time i check on it, I see it's still in Alpha Phase of development.

This post may be more appropriate under Security.

 

[dvk01]

I've tried it, it may be a good scanner but
it is extremely slow and on my P4 1500mhz takes over 15 hours to scan 8 gig

Until it works a bit quicker I cannot see any home user using it and being unable to use the computer for that length of time

Derek

 

[buckaroo]

I've tried it, it may be a good scanner but it is extremely slow and on my P4 1500mhz takes over 15 hours to scan 8 gig

whoa!!!!! Yeah, I guess 15 hours would be a slight problem for most people. I'm sure that's why it's still in development.

Hey dvk01, thanks for checking it out and letting us know your experience.

 

[JohnWill]

Originally posted by dvk01:
I've tried it, it may be a good scanner but
it is extremely slow and on my P4 1500mhz takes over 15 hours to scan 8 gig

YIKES! It would be working for days on my stuff!

 

[CalamityJane]

Originally posted by dvk01:
I've tried it, it may be a good scanner but
it is extremely slow and on my P4 1500mhz takes over 15 hours to scan 8 gig

Hi Guys I am new here as someone pointed me to this thread with a question about if that long scan time was possible. I have been a home user/tester of the Gladiator AV since the first week of September last year and can answer.

The article that started this thread I did see in the Lockergnome newsletter It didn't list that GAV is still in Alpha, so I am glad you all saw that when visiting the link.

To have a machine take 15 hours to scan is highly unusual, but possible if you have huge files and are using the Full System/All Files scan.

The GAV engine had a very recent update which speeded up the slow scans quite a bit. My machine using that setting now takes a total of one & a half hours....about 3 times my resident AV (ETrust EZ AV). Still slow, but better and very thorough.

I checked in the GAV forums for others and found a couple that were asking on some unusually long scan times (these are old threads though, before the engine update):

This thread - 27 Gbs total files took 12 hours
http://forum.gladiator-antivirus.com/index.php?act=ST&f=54&t=890

These were some of the answers to comments about slow scan speeds at this point in time.

Right now the main focus is not on speed..but rather form and function. This scanner is looking in areas and WAYS that not many scanners do today...trying to keep one step ahead of the technology that is now used by some malicious "bad boys".

It is my understanding that the speed of the scanner will be more finely tuned later in the development.

Also this

Some other AV Programs dont, scan the whole files.
That means for instance they scan only the first 3 MB.
(For instance Norton )

And this

And... GAV does scan all filetypes in ZIP Files - not only *.EXE *.DLL *.PIF *.SCR eg.

NAV, Trend and many other AV's don't have a Runtime unpack Engine (that means they only unpack Archives like ZIP) - GAV does unpack for instance UPX Files.
That means GAV has to detect what is UPX, what is PECompact eg. NAV does not care about this because it makes only RAW Scans of the files - that means if a virus is not in that format (packed) what Norton expects it does not find the trojan/backdoor.

However, the scanner is finding some nasties right now that some AVs miss - so the slower scan speeds at this point are worth it to some. Others may want to wait until the product is finished. Some threads on that:

Found Backdoor.SDbot trojan(DSLReports)
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,5736241~root=security,1~mode=flat

Nimda Found (GAV Forums)
http://forum.gladiator-antivirus.com/index.php?act=ST&f=35&t=591

There are other scan options that are quicker, and most people will not be doing full system/all files scans all the time, but during testing many do. Also people who think they may be infected.

I hope that helps If not, you could visit the forum and ask directly there.

 

[NameTooLong]

Well with a 15 hour scan, I think I'll just stay away from that one. Norton took less than 30 minutes for my 80,000+ files totalling 60+ gigs set on full system scan.

 

[buckaroo]

Hi CJ, welcome to TSG!

Really appreciate the information you posted. I will be interested in knowing when GAV is going to be released. I guess I'll have to check the site periodically. I'll also have to check out that Lockergnome article you mentioned.

Apprciate you taking the time to post.

 

[CalamityJane]

Thanks, Buckaroo

The Lockergnome article was the text in the first post of the thread here - a friend sent it to me yesterday so I recognized it.

LOL - now having posted that info on slow scan, I just checked the update alerts and now is posted there is an improved Turbo boost engine for download and the developer says "GAV scanns now fast as hell with full system scan". Timely post (he must have heard you guys over here! - just kidding)

 

[buckaroo]

Well, if that was the extent of the Lockergnome "article", then I guess I'll pass on checking it out.

Hey, do us a favor and post back here if you get to try that latest update.

Thanks.

 

[CalamityJane]

Buckaroo

Yup! That was the whole article (and they forgot to mention it IS Alpha so you can't really compare it to finished products). It was first started as an AntiTrojan product which is when I began testing it since I was anxious to find a free one that had good support. Since then, the developer has changed it to be both an AV and AT.

I did check out the update and the scan time for all files is about half of what it was. So now about 2x the time my current AV takes.

Edited to correct scan speed to scan time

 

[dvk01]

Since my last post I have updated to the latest scan engine etc and it is a lot faster.

I have done a complete system scan this am an it only took 80 minutes on nearly 9 gig of files.

It seems thorough and find what it calls "suspect files". it flags up live update files like it's own and MS files as possible spyware so it can be handy for that

When it's finished I think it might be a very ggod and useful product, but it is still in early stages of development and needs to be kept an eye on.

I wil use it as a back up scanner, but no way would I trust it as a main scanner.

Derek

 

[CalamityJane]

Originally posted by dvk01:

I wil use it as a back up scanner, but no way would I trust it as a main scanner.

Derek

Exactly - even Gladiator would tell you not to use it as a main scanner while still in Alpha.

Thanks for the update on scan speeds! I was wondering how long it would take on your machine now.

 

[buckaroo]

Well, it's good to hear about the improvement in scan speed. Definitely a product I'll try to keep track of.

Thanks for keeping us here updated.